Midge Ure

SET superlatively, even by the spectacular stands of the North Yorkshire dales, Stalling Busk is a stone built hamlet of 17 souls, officially if obscurely in Raydale.

Semerwater lies, lovely, below.

There is no River Ray any more than there is a River Wensley. Wensleydale’s river is the Ure, and more of that shortly. A finger post from the A684 indicates “Stalling Busk only”; thereafter the way is exhausted.

The village has a post box, a telephone kiosk and the lovely little church of St Matthew, from the front resembling a Swiss chalet. Across the road, an uncommonly crowded notice board reveals that it is St Matthew’s centenary year and that, last Tuesday evening, Ian Robinson would there be ordained to the priesthood.

The service is to be outdoors, or at least beneath a gazebo, no ordinary ordination and Ian Robinson an extraordinary ordinand.

Apart from anything else, he owns an olive farm in Spain. “Doesn’t everyone?” he asks, cheerfully.

It is not for the admirable Ian, nor for the happiness of the occasion, nor even for the glorious location that the evening may longest be remembered, however. It is for the myriad midges; this is midge Ure.

Ann Chapman, priest-in-charge of St Oswalds’s, Askrigg, and of Stalling Busk, notes in her welcome how good it is to be outside – “don’t you just love it?” – but also offers thanks for putting up with the mozzies and the midges.

What, there are mozzies, too?

Ian Robinson, very much handson, had noticed the winged squadron when helping erect the gazebo that morning. “I was wearing shorts.

When I looked down my legs were black with them,” he says.

Fly-by-night and fly by day, the little perishers even start a theological debate – “We need to remember that they’re still God’s creatures,” cries an unseen female priest towards the end of the service – though the more secular supposition is that if you kill one, a million come to the funeral.

But are midges really God’s creatures or the work of the devil? Why are they there? What’s their place in the food chain gang? Should they be tolerated or terminated? Should we bless their cotton socks or, rather like the god-fearing Mr Barack Obama, ring their entomological necks?

Not so much once bitten as several thousand times shy, only the truly saintly might suppose with Mrs C F Alexander that the Lord God made them all.

It was the summer of 2002 that last we’d looked into Stalling Busk church. This was, still is, the sevenyear itch.

IAN Robinson is 56. He was an engineer, helped build schools and hospitals, owned a manufacturing company, still runs a holiday cottage operation but plans to spend at least three-and-a-half days a week, unpaid, in the parish.

He and his wife Linda had bought a barn in Thoralby, a few miles east, with the intention of commercial conversion. “I suppose we realised we were doing it for ourselves when we found ourselves putting a shower in the garage for the dog,” he says.

The dog, appropriately, is called Oswald.

For ten years he was also a lay reader, involved in all sorts of pioneering church projects in Manchester and Lancashire, and for the past year has served as deacon in the Askrigg parish.

He’d first heard whisperings in his ear 30 years ago, did his best to ignore them. “When I left work they said I’d be back with my collar turned round the other way.

“I told them that there was no chance, that it was a mug’s game, that priests were on call 24 hours a day. I always was a bit slow.”

The gazebo overflows. On a good Sunday St Matthew’s might attract between eight and ten, on a bad one four or five. “We aren’t really bothered about bums on seats,” says Lesley Coates Jones, the church secretary, “we’re bothered about people and about the community.”

Shortly before the start, a chap strolls past smoking a prodigious pipe. “They don’t like it,” he says, and none needs ask who “they” might be.

The sky darkens, rain threatens, seats appear all taken. Someone suggests sitting with the clergy, reminiscent of the parable of the wedding feast save that for “Go though higher”

read “Keep thou drier”.

The ordination service is led by the Right Reverend John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, a man much given to laughter when the occasion’s right. Ann Chapman, a preacher equally given to asking questions of her congregations, gives the address.

An Ann Chapman sermon, it’s said, is a bit like an ecclesiastical Who Wants to be a Millionaire, save that the rewards will have to be in heaven.

This time she asks us to suggest what’s expected from the priesthood.

Someone says believing – as well a priest might – others loving, listening, learning, caring and sharing.

Daring might be useful, too, and Ian Robinson may well be a risk taker, but none mentions it.

The bishop has also to address the formal charge to the new priest – “We trust that long ago you began to weigh and ponder these things,” he begins and, doubtless having read the new man’s cv, essays another little laugh.

Amid it, a cock crows twice, more belatedly than biblically. As if to make the point, it crows a few more times as well.

On a sultry evening, a welcome breeze blows up. It’s not exactly the wind of change – poor chap hasn’t been there five minutes – but what the church might call a fresh expression, nonetheless.

Lesley Coates Jones gives him an envelope by way of welcome.

“There’s a herd of goats in there,”

she says and so, effectively, there is.

It represents the church’s donation to Christian Aid; a grateful family in Bangladesh will look after the goats for him.

The service ends about 8.45pm, everyone heading back inside for shelter and for succour. In the west, the sun’s making a final appearance over the hills, a lovely end to a lovely evening. Here’s to you, Mr Robinson.

■ St Matthew’s church, Stalling Busk, holds a flower festival from August 28-30, with the annual Semerwater lakeside service on August 29. The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds will be back for a centenary service on September 20.